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Thursday, September 26, 2013

I have scheduled my first reading of He's the Weird Teacher!!!
I am very excited!!!
I will now show this by abusing the exclamation point key!!!...!!

Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, OR is one of the two bookstores currently holding a copy of He's the Weird Teacher on consignment. One benefit of that is they are willing to let me have a talk/reading in their store. They will be advertising it on their website and in their newsletter, as well as putting a sign up in the store window, which I think I'm going to create (All information is based on the five minute conversation I had with their planner today. Emails will be exchanged, details will emerge).

Obviously, if you are in the area I would love for you to come. There will be many pictures and possibly some video of the event. I'll be ordering a ton of copies of the book to take with me. And I will quietly fret that it will be me, my wife, and the tiny human there, and at least one of those people will either sleep or cry through the whole thing.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

He's the Weird Teacher has arrived in bookstores across one small town in Southern Oregon!
Both Tree House Children's Books and Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, OR have agreed to take a few copies of the book on consignment since I'm a local author.
We were walking through Ashland, a nice little town, passing the shops and I couldn't help myself from asking if they would take the book. Both said yes, with different caveats and benefits.

Bloomsbury, which is a big fancy independent bookstore, has said they would only take one copy right now, which is up on a shelf somewhere, we let before I saw her put it out. But I'm to call tomorrow, Thursday, and speak to one of the owners about setting up a reading and promotional night, during which I can bring in more to sell. And if the one sells, they'll tell me and I'll bring in more for the store. My split there is 60/40. So the store keeps 40% of what the price of the book is.

Tree House is a children's book store, and a really cute fun one at that. The shop is mostly filled with children's book, picture books and the like, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. The owner was very nice and excited to have a local author's book up in her store. She immediately picked a place out on the shelf (I brought in one copy to show her) and put it up, front-facing. When she asked how many I could bring in I replied, how many do you want? This was after Bloomsbury, so I was expecting something along the lines of, "Well, let's see how the one sells." Nope! "We can have six, that way I can put up five spine out and one front-facing so it's easy to see. Plus, if you make a little author blurb I'll stick it to the shelf under the book. Lots of teachers shop here, so that will probably help." I'm already on createspace ordering the next five to bring in. But wait, there's more. "If you make bookmarks and bring them in I'll put them on the counter for people to take. Any way to get the name out." Needless to say I'm working on bookmarks with Dorothy of the awesome cover. The owner also said she'd be happy to talk about a promotional thing, but after the new year because they are all filled up until December. The split there is 75/25, which is better than I'd get from any publisher on the planet.
This is quite exciting for me. My book exists as a real live book in two real live bookstores. I'm also working on helping the bookstore at the University of the Pacific and at the University of Hawaii ordering a few, plus one or two other promotional things.
Thanks again to everyone reading the book and saying nice things. The reviews on amazon are great, and if you read it on your Nook it needs reviews in the B&N store too.
If you're in Ashland pop in to Tree House or Bloomsbury. If you're in Barnes and Noble bother the worker drones into looking it up on their system and make them tell you it's not carried in store.
Thanks for reading!

Sunday, September 8, 2013

He's the Weird Teacher is now live in the Barnes and Noble Nook Store! So if you have a Nook and Smashwords was being a pain, now you've got an even easier option.
Just like on Amazon, the Nook Store uses reviews to recommend books to browsers. So if you've bought from one of those two places please please please go and leave a review. I'm not talking about a giant book report, just a sentence or two telling strangers they should spend a couple bucks because it's funny, interesting, whatever you think. I'm not asking for a bunch of five stars, leave what you think it deserves. It won't hurt my feelings. But reviews move stuff around in the computer.
Also, lots of you have been sharing and tweeting and whatnot, which is great. Please keep it up. Chuck Klosterman once said that commercials and ads and advertising don't sell books. The only thing that sells books is a person you trust saying, "Hey, you should buy this book." So please, tell people you think would like it that they will like it.
Thanks!